I wanted to take a moment to introduce Courtney, our new Social Media Manager at Berkman Strategic Communications. At Berkman, she blends our expertise in traditional forms of strategic communications with the new and rapidly evolving world of social media. She was born the same year as the internet, and offers our clients the knowledge and skills that can only be garnered through a lifetime of exposure to the internet, four years managing businesses’ social media accounts in various capacities, and a degree from the University of San Diego.

At Berkman Strategic Communications she assists our clients by creating conversations on a variety of social media outlets and deriving leads and sales from the relationships created by those conversations. After gaining a full understanding of each client’s specific needs and goals, she carefully crafts a custom social media strategy that will create and grow over-all brand awareness, generate inbound traffic, and cultivate leads, and sales.

Each social media strategy she creates is just as unique and innovative as the client it was created for. There is no such thing as a cookie cutter strategy when it comes to social media. It is her individual focused approach that cultivates for our clients consistent long-term social media success.

Regardless of whether they already have an established social media presence or are starting from scratch, she builds our clients’ audiences, and communicates to those audiences what it is about each client’s brand that makes it special and unique. Through posts, conversations, and commentary she communicates what problems our client can solve for their social media followers and how our client can make their audience’s lives better.

Social media is a constantly evolving and growing PR platform, and through creativity, education, and intuition she ensures that each one of Berkman’s clients is ahead of the curve.

Let me know if establishing and growing your social media presence is something that sounds good to you… because I know just the person!

Valentine’s Day is coming up and all we can think about is what the best hashtag for the consumer-centric “holiday” could be to put in our tweets. Seriously. We’re going with #VDay2011!

Did you know Lady Gaga has 27.7 million Facebook fans? We didn’t either. But Virgin Mobile noticed and wants to guide

Image from Mashable

some of her fans to their Facebook page. Currently with 40,000 “liking” their page, Virgin Mobile hopes to reach 1 million bythe end of the year with a tie-in with Lady Gaga. Starting next week, Virgin Mobil will be launching a contest to find 10 official bloggers for new dates in Lady Gaga’s “Monster Ball” tour. “To enter, bloggers are encouraged to send a short video to Virgin Mobile Live’s Facebook page displaying their ‘best work.’” The public will vote via Facebook. In order to submit, people must like the page. Although, it’s unclear what exactly what they win. We’ll find out on Monday.

Tumblr is becoming the go-to platform for fashion brands. Kate Spade launched katespadeny.tumblr.com Thursday morning. They believe that Tumblr allows them to engage with their fans on a more visual level. The Tumblr blog is highly interactive and frequently responds to and reblogs users’ questions and content. Fashion-related Tumblr blogs are reblogged on a much greater scale than general Tumblr posts. Other notable brands using Tumblr are Oscar de la Renta,Alexander McQueen, ModCloth, Ann Taylor, and many other brands. We love Tumblr!

two-yearcontract on Friday and Saturday, February 11 and 12. This promo ties in with their Valentine’s Day promotion. These phones include high-end smartphones (some retailing at $499!!). To get a choice of any phone, you must visit a T-Mobile store.Online, you have a limited selection to choose from. So what’s it going to be? A free phone from T-Mobile, one of theweaker services, or Verizon’s iPhone 4 which will probably be outdated in a few months?

Itching to create your own mobile app but don’t have the skills? ShoutEm has developed a product that allows you to effortlessly create an iPhone app (RSS feed, event listings, video, audio podcasts, radio streaming, locations, and microblogging). It’s simple and any modules can be rearranged however way you want. You can test it on your iPhone. You can also brand the app! Imagine the possibilities. To create your mobile app, you must pay a monthly fee starting from $29.90/month for the Basic plan: 1000 installs and lacks some advanced features.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. People are scrambling through search engines to find the best wedding ideas. Well Google responded and created a dedicated site where consumers can create a wedding website, edit photos, and plan their wedding using wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs, and Picnik. Teaming up with wedding planner Michelle Rago, Google is hosting a wedding sweepstakes offering a prize of $25,000 and the chance to get Rago to help plan your wedding. Are you going to enlist Google to plan your wedding?

iAds are becoming more and more popular. Axe created a slightly controversial iAd called “Swipe an Angel.” The ad allows users manipulate female angels from the ads by making them spin and when the iPhone is shaken, shed their feathers. The link above provides a video. Here’s the original TV ad:

Hope everyone has a great Valentine’s Day or Single Awareness Day! Look out for all the “I Hate Valentine’s Day” campaigns around Facebook and Twitter!